The Blood's Crimson
by Paimpont
Summary: The new member of Dr. House's team, Dr. Cullen, has an uncanny ability to smell what's wrong with the patients. Has House taken too much Vicodin, or is there something strange about Dr. Cullen? Very mild slash.
1. Chapter 1

I don't care for mornings. Or Mondays. So of course Cuddy was all over me the moment I staggered into the hospital Monday morning.

"House! Where the hell have you _been? _It's eleven o'clock."

I lifted my sunglasses just enough to give her a murderous glance that would have struck fear into the heart of any human being. But nooooo, not Cuddy.

"House, I have a new patient I need you to see right away."

"It's lupus. Leave me alone."

She ignored me. She always does.

"A healthy 40 year old male fell into a coma for no discernible reason. The scans revealed nothing. No brain damage, no heart damage, no blood toxins, no trauma. Nothing."

"He's probably faking it to avoid his boss."

"House!" She whacked me over the head with the file. "Go deal with the patient, _now._ _And – " _she paused, for dramatic effect. "I hired a new member for your team."

That was too much, even for Cuddy. "Well, unhire them, will you? Unless it's someone hot, of course."

A slight smile. "Hm. Well, I would say your new team member is _very_ hot."

"Really?" That didn't sound so bad.

I stepped back to avoid being run over by a doctor pushing a patient in a wheeled bed toward the elevator. Patient looked healthy enough, apart from being unconscious. Handsome, tan, surfer type. I winced. I push my patients around too, but not _literally. _That's what nurses are for. Dealing with patients. Doctors diagnose, at a distance. I hate those _involved _doctor types.

Cuddy beamed. "House, here's the newest member of your team right now. "Dr. House, this is Dr. Cullen. _And_ your patient, coming back from his CT scan."

I looked at the doctor suspiciously. A guy, huh? Thanks, Cuddy. Yup, I hated him. Not only was he one of those touchy-feely types, leaning tenderly over the patient, as if he was trying to inhale his scent or something – he was also the pale, handsome, Greek god type. Very annoying.

Dr. Cullen flashed us a smile, and swear I heard Cuddy whimper softly by my side. "A pleasure to meet you, Dr. House. I have heard so much about you." His voice had a rather pleasant quality to it, musing, like a guitar you play when nobody's listening. His face was so perfect it should be illegal on a man. God, I hated him.

"I'll see you in the conference room in a minute for the differential," his melodious voice went on. "I'll just make sure the patient is comfortable first."

I turned away from him, wordlessly. I _really_ didn't need a guy like this on a Monday morning.

..

They were all seated around the table, except for the Cullen guy who was over by the window. I bounced a tennis ball against the wall now and then, mostly to see who would snap first if I kept it up.

"All right, everyone. Differential? What makes a healthy 40 year old male with an awesome tan fall into a coma?"

"A metabolic disorder?" Foreman was the first to speak, as always. Suck up.

"Could be, I suppose. You go test for that. Chase?"

"Er… A stroke?"

Good God, do I keep the dashing Aussie on the team only for his ornamental qualities?

"And why wouldn't that have shown up on the initial brain scan, you moron?"

Chase flushed. "Well, how about a toxin, then?"

I shrugged. "At least that makes sense. You go and search the patient's home, and take Cameron with you before she can suggest lupus."

Cameron looked annoyed. "I wasn't going to suggest…" Yeah. Like hell you weren't.

The new guy, Cullen, was standing with his back to me, looking steadily out the window. What the fuck was he playing at? There's nothing to see out of any window in New Jersey.

"Hey, you!" I tossed the tennis ball at the back of his pale gold head.

Damn! His reflexes were awesome. Without even turning around, he reached a hand up behind him and caught the ball. Then he turned slowly, and with a little smile bounced the ball right back at me. "It's hemochromatosis."

It wasn't a suggestion. It was a diagnosis.

I looked at him with some interest. "Hemochromatosis?" Interesting idea. Far-fetched, but possible. The patient had none of the usual symptoms of hemochromatosis – no liver damage, no heart damage. But the excessive iron absorption in his blood _could _manifest in other ways, as a darkening of the skin, for example, looking for all intents and purposes like a superb tan. And it _could_ cause the patient to fall into a coma…

"All right. Go draw some blood and get me his transferring saturation numbers, will you?"

Cullen nodded briefly and went off. Somehow, we both knew what those numbers would be.

I was intrigued. How the hell did he _do_ that?

..

The patient had hemochromatosis. I collared Cullen in the elevator.

"Hey, Cullen. How did you know he had hemochromatosis?"

He smiled a perfect smile, and his eyes were strangely hypnotic. For some reason, I just couldn't keep my eyes away from his. His eyes were a very unusual color, kind of golden.

He shrugged lightly. "Oh, I don't know. I just get these hunches sometimes. I suppose that happens to everyone."

I looked at him suspiciously. "I get hunches too, but my hunches are _based_ on something. Like reading the file. Your hunch wasn't based on anything. You hadn't even seen the file yet. All you did was bend over the patient and kind of _inhale _him. Did you smell the excess iron in his blood, or what?"

My voice was dripping with sarcasm, but Cullen merely smiled an angelic smile and said softly: "You never know, Dr. House. Perhaps I did."

Huh.

And then… Well, Cuddy is always after me about the Vicodin, and so is Wilson. Totally ridiculous, of course. I take pain medicine because I'm in _pain, _that's all. It's not affecting my mind at all; it's just making it possible for me to function.

But for a moment I started to wonder. Perhaps I _was_ overdoing the Vicodin? For it seemed to me, absurdly, that Cullen kind of breathed in, deeply, as if he was smelling _me_ in the enclosed space of the elevator, and I thought I heard him whisper something about my _scent._ And for a moment, it seemed as if his eyes darkened, and as he stepped off the elevator and uttered a polite farewell greeting, it seemed as if his voice was trembling.

I'm _definitely_ taking too much Vicodin.


	2. Chapter 2

"There you are, Dr. House."

Cullen? What the hell? I was peacefully searching through Cuddy's desk while she was out to lunch, hoping to retrieve some evidence of the precise nature of her recent dinner with Wilson, when Cullen appeared in the doorway.

"What?" I was impatient.

"The team is waiting for you in the conference room, Dr. House. A new patient from Kentucky, with no symptoms, except blue skin."

"Blue skin, huh? Tell him to call James Cameron. I hear they are casting for Avatar II. Can't you see I'm busy?"

I kept looking through the drawer.

Oh, fuck. I had cut my finger on Cuddy's paper knife. It was bleeding properly, too. Dark red beads appeared on my finger. I rummaged in the drawer. Is it too much to ask for a dean of medicine to keep a couple of band aids in her desk?

Cullen made a faint sound, and I looked up. What was up with him? He looked strange. Terrible and beautiful and strange at the same time.

He was staring at my finger. "Your blood – " His voice came out in a whisper. "Your blood – Oh, God, the smell of your blood…"

He came towards me, slowly, walking like someone in a trance. And then he did the oddest thing. He grabbed my hand, lifted my finger to his mouth, and licked the blood drops off. He moaned softly as his tongue lapped up the dark red drops. His hand, clutching mine, was icy cold.

What - ? It was weird as hell, and yet strangely arousing. Dang, I always thought I was straight, but this was enough to change anyone's mind.

He pulled back abruptly, a horrified look on his face. "I – Dr. House, I apologize, I… This has never happened to me before. I have learned to tolerate the smell of blood, but yours… Yours is intoxicating, like nothing I have ever experienced. There is no wine… like the blood's crimson…"

Ah. I was beginning to like him. On the one hand, he was a delusional madman strangely obsessed with my blood. But on the other hand, he had read Ezra Pound. All in all, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

"The smell of my blood, huh? I would have thought my blood smelled of Vicodin."

A shadow of a smile flitted across his handsome face. "Oh, it does. That part is rather revolting. But underneath the smell of the fourteen and a half Vicodin, there is another scent, the scent of your blood, your blood singing to me... Now I finally understand what Edward was talking about... I do apologize. I should not be saying any of this."

Cullen retreated towards the door, a look of shame and horror on his impossibly beautiful face. Another whispered apology, and he was gone.

Fourteen and a half? That many? I did a quick calculation in my head. Yes, that was probably about right.

I sat for a long time in Cuddy's chair, thinking hard. Carlisle Cullen… The more I thought about it, the more I realized that there was only one possible explanation for his peculiar behavior, only one theory that fit all the facts… His strange ability to _smell_ the disease in the patient's blood, his obsession with _my _blood, his pale color, his odd demeanor… Yes, it all fit.

..

"_You've got Addison's disease!" _

I slammed my files down on the table in front of him, triumphantly. Cullen looked at me with complete incomprehension.

"I've got… what?"

"Addison's disease. It all fits." I sat down across from him at the cafeteria table where he had been sitting and staring at an untouched cup of coffee.

"You think I've got Addison's disease?" There was a hint of laughter in his voice. Very odd.

"Yes, you do. It's the only explanation."

Why was he smiling like that?

"All right." He pushed the cup of coffee aside. "Let's hear it, then, Dr. House. Why do you think I've got Addison's? Isn't that disease usually characterized by hyperpigmentation, by the way? Shouldn't my skin be unusually dark?"

He looked down at his ivory hand.

I shook my head impatiently. "_Primary_ Addison's, yes, but _secondary _Addison's is often accompanied by vitiligo, a _lack_ of pigmentation. And then there's your sense of smell. _Nobody_ should be able to smell as well as you do. You _smelled _the fourteen and a half Vicodin? And the patient's hemochromatosis? That's not normal. You have an abnormally acute sense of smell, _hyperosmia. _Another characteristic sign of Addison's."

"I see." Was that amusement in his voice? "Anything else?"

"Well, there is also your weird attraction to me, to my blood… I think we can safely ascribe that to the psychosis that sometimes accompanies advanced stages of Addison's."

"Can we?"

"Yes," I said firmly. "We can. Because any other explanation is impossible."

He smiled at me, his eyes impossibly golden. "I suppose may be right," he said softly. "Addison's is as good as anything else, I suppose."

"Not Addison's?" I was puzzled. "Well, it doesn't explain quite everything, I suppose. Like your cold skin."

"Right." He sat silently for a moment. Then he sighed. "There is... another condition, an affliction that has affected several members of my family. It's not fatal, and extraordinarily rare. But I don't feel like talking about it for the moment."

"I see." Now, this was getting interesting.

..

Later, I wrote his symptoms down on my whiteboard.

_hyperosmia_

_psychosis_

_cold skin_

_pallor_

Anything else unusual about the good-looking doctor? I thought for a moment. Well, I suppose _that_ might be a symptom as well...

I added:

_pathological beauty_

I sat staring at my whiteboard for hours. No, nothing. If not Addison's, then what? This was completely perplexing. I took another fistful of Vicodin, but it didn't seem to help either. Very, very odd...


	3. Chapter 3

"Cuddy, I need to see Cullen's file. Anything you've got on him. "

Cuddy, looking ravishing in a low-cut red lace dress today, smiled in that seriously annoying way she does sometimes. "Do you? If you are becoming interested in his file and his personal life, I assume that means you are keeping him on the team?"

She sighed a little. "He is amazingly attractive, isn't he? There's something almost _magnetic_ about him, about his eyes..." She handed me a file from her desk. "Here. Nothing very exciting in his file, I'm afraid. Excellent qualifications, moved here from rural Washington state."

"Rural Washington state? Oh, as opposed to _urban_ Washington state?" I rifled through his papers. This was strange. Why would a guy with these credentials be practicing medicine in the jungle? Must be in a witness protection program or something. These papers were so flawless they were probably fabricated by the FBI.

"What do you know about his personal life? Did he give any reason for suddenly wanting to move back to civilization after his years in the rainforest?"

Cuddy looked exasperated. "There is no rainforest in Washington state, House. Some people like living in the country, you know."

"Yeah, right. People like the Unabomber. People with things to hide."

"Anyway, he told me he wanted a change of scenery after his recent divorce. I wonder how long it will take him to feel ready to date again..."

"Change of scenery, huh?" I paused for a minute. Something wasn't quite right here. Something didn't add up.

Cuddy gave me a funny look. "All right, House, what's up? What's with the sudden interest in the gorgeous doctor?"

"Oh, I don't know. Just curiosity. Same feeling I've got about the color of your lingerie today… Red or black?" My hand was a little naughty, and Cuddy slapped it away.

"Oh, get lost, House."

I lingered in the doorway on my way out. "There is something weird about Cullen, though." I paused dramatically. "I think he wants my _blood_."

Cuddy sighed. "Oh, don't we all?"

..

Well, the blue-skinned patient was definitely cool. Middle-aged guy lying there in his hospital bed, looking for all intents and purposes like a slightly overweight Hindu god. I made a mental note to re-read the Bhagavad Gita; what if the ancient Indians weren't kidding about the blue-skinned Krishna? This could put so much of Hinduism into a different light.

"All right, people, what's the differential for being a smurf?" I looked around the conference room expectantly.

They groaned.

"Are we going to have to listen to you crack jokes about the patient's skin color all week?" Cameron sighed.

"Pretty much," I admitted.

"Then let's just find a diagnosis as fast as possible. He's got _argyria_, an excess of silver in his body, probably caused by working in a silver mine for a long period of time, or by ingesting colloidal silver medicinally."

"Excellent idea. You go and draw some blood. Actually, no, _Cullen, _you go and draw blood. I'll come with you, just to watch."

"Certainly, Dr. House." Cullen was politely unperturbed, as if blood meant nothing to him.

"_You_ are going to _watch_ someone draw blood?" Foreman was staring at me suspiciously.

"Yup." And I strolled off with Cullen, humming "Blue Christmas" softly under my breath.

..

I watched Cullen closely as he plunged the syringe into the patient's vein, remembering how he had reacted to my blood. Was he going to snap? But no, he drew the patient's blood as serenely as an angel. Perhaps I had imagined that whole weird scene the other day? Wouldn't be the first time, I suppose.

Afterwards, as we walked the vial over to the lab, I whispered in Cullen's ear: "So, how does this blood _smell_ to you? A little too silvery?"

He smiled slightly and shook his head. "No, the patient does not have argyria. There is no excess silver in his blood."

Apparently, his abnormally acute sense of smell was dead on. The lab results came back negative.

Back to scratch, and back to the conference room.

"All right, people." I whistled a little blues song that made them cringe again. "What causes blue skin in someone too short for a Nav'i, too tall for a smurf, and too unattractive for an Indian god?"

"Heart disease?" Chase, of course. Mr. Obvious.

"Yeah, except we checked his heart already, and it's fine. And so are his lungs. And his brain. In fact, he's not even depressed, not even slightly _blue..._"

More collective groaning.

"Excess methemoglobin," said Cullen quietly.

Foreman whistled. "Now, _there's_ an idea. Methemoglobin is blue, and if he's got some kind of abnormal hemoglobin formation, that could explain everything. We should test for abnormal hemoglobin."

But Cullen just shook his blond head and smiled an impossibly beautiful smile. "No, the problem lies in a missing enzyme. There is no diaphorase in his blood, which would normally convert excess methemoglobin back to the normal red hemoglobin."

_Damn! _That made perfect sense! This guy was better than... me?

"All right, people. You heard him. Let's take a look. Chase, go get me 100 milligrams of methylene blue."

"What-" Chase looked completely bewildered. "But that's a blue dye... Are you going to inject a blue patient with _blue dye_?"

"Yup."

The patient moaned and groaned about it, of course, since he was worried that a syringe full of blue stuff would only make him bluer. "Don't worry," I muttered. "There are tons of Nav'i groupies out there who would find you irresistible." He didn't look convinced.

But he wasn't complaining a few minutes later. The patient changed color before our very eyes, transforming from a flabby Krishna into an unattractive pink-skinned farmer in less than five minutes. Nice catalyst, methylene blue. A daily pill of the blue stuff should be enough to keep him pink and ugly for the rest of his miserable life.

One mystery solved. But the mystery of my new team member was deepening. For as we took the elevator down to the lobby together, Cullen and I, I happened to stumble a little. Could happen when you have a bad leg... He caught me hurriedly as I fell, a look of deep concern on his angelic face. And as he was holding me steady, gazing at me and _breathing_ me, I stabbed his arm quickly with a syringe I happened to keep up my sleeve. Let's see what _your_ blood reveals, Cullen!

He laughed. He actually laughed at me, a musical, silvery laugh. "I should have seen that coming, Dr. House. I let myself be distracted for a moment by... Oh, never mind. Have a good evening, Dr. House. I trust your leg will not give you any more trouble."

And he walked off out of the hospital and into the night. I stood there, looking at the broken syringe in my hand. The needle had snapped off when I tried to insert it into his arm.

_What the hell?_


	4. Chapter 4

I was thinking hard. All right, what causes someone's arm to turn as hard as stone? Hard enough to break the needle off a syringe? Humans don't _have _exoskeletons, damn it! Unless...

_Fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva_, of course, FOP… It's a rare genetic disease that will gradually turn a person's muscles into bone, often beginning at the neck and continuing down through the shoulders and arms, then the hips and legs, until the entire body is turned into bone and the patient dies. And yes, Cullen did say that his whole family was affected by whatever the hell it is that he has, which points to a genetic disorder.

Except… A person with FOP would have a very hard time moving the affected limbs. His movements would get slower and stiffer as the disease progressed. An image flashed through my mind of Cullen's arm swiftly catching the tennis ball behind his back. No. No way does he have FOP. Damn! This is the most intriguing set of symptoms I've ever come across. _There is no known disease that can explain all his symptoms. _The ossification of his muscles, the abnormally acute sense of smell, his psychotic obsession with blood, his cold skin, his superb reflexes, his pallor… It doesn't add up to _anything… _Does it?

"House! Are you all right?" My thoughts were interrupted by Wilson.

"Just thinking."

"Standing in the lobby? At midnight?" He sighed. "Come on, House. I'll buy you dinner. The Chinese place is still open."

I lit up. "You're on."

...

Wilson groaned when I ordered the Peking duck. "Do you _always_ have to order the most expensive thing on the menu?"

I looked at him with some surprise. "Of course. You said you were paying."

He sighed. "Well, at least promise me you won't go into the whole why-don't-you-call-it-Beijing-duck issue with the manager this time. I'm tired."

"Wouldn't dream of it." I downed a couple of bottles of Tsingtao, pensively. "Say, Wilson. What do you know about Cullen?"

"Your new team member?" Wilson smiled a little. "He's _good, _isn't he? Rumor has it he may be a better doctor than you."

"Well, maybe, but at least I'm better looking. Seriously, you ordered the _tofu_? Are you seeing someone again?"

"No, I'm not." Wilson chewed his tofu heroically, but anyone could see that he was struggling. "I'm just trying to eat better. For the sake of my health. You know, that thing doctors are concerned with."

"Oh, that. Seriously, though - I'd like to find out more about Cullen. Maybe I'll hire a private investigator."

Wilson gave up on the tofu and speared a piece of carrot. "Well, let's see. He and his ex-wife have five adopted kids, all in high school. Their names are Emmett, Rosalie, Jasper, Alice, and Edward. Cullen calls the kids daily, and they are all adapting well to the divorce."

I was baffled. "How do you know all of this?"

Wilson shrugged. "I use a sophisticated interrogation technique. It's called being interested in other people and asking questions. You know, having _conversations_ with people, rather than hiring professionals to spy on them. And by the way, _she _left _him. _For another man."

I almost choked on a piece of duck. "No way! Cullen's wife left _him?_ What... For a better-looking guy? Or a smarter one? That's not possible! He's goddamn _perfect_!"

"Apparently, she left him for a guy named Charlie. And no, he wasn't particularly good-looking, just a nice ordinary guy. Ordinary appealed to her, apparently."

"Oh."

Wilson was looking at me curiously. "So why are you so interested in Cullen?"

I waived my Tsingtao impatiently. "Well, isn't that obvious? The man is a mystery. I like mysteries."

Wilson smiled an odd little smile. "You _like _him_, _don't you? You really like Cullen... And here I was, thinking you were straight..."

"_What? _Oh, you think I'm gay now?"

Wilson's smile broadened. "Perhaps you are, after all. Never seen that side of you, but I suppose anything's possible."

Never seen that side of me, huh? Well, all right, if Wilson was too drunk to remember that taxi ride home after the Christmas party, so was I... 'Nuff said.

"Oh, come off it. I'm just curious about Cullen, that's all."

"Hm." Wilson smiled a little as he took another heroic stab at the tofu. "You know, he appears to be curious about you too. He's been asking questions about you. Cuddy's been very happy to fill him in on all the details, I hear..."

"Yeah? I hope she told him I was a good kisser."

"That's not precisely how she usually puts it, I believe." For some reason, Wilson asked for the check before I had a chance to order dessert.

..

But the Cullen case only got stranger. I decided not to go home after dinner, but headed back to the office instead. I knew I had a copy of an old French article on FOP somewhere, and I wanted to see if I had missed anything. I ended up spending the rest of the night in my office reading about all the possible causes of arms as hard as stone. Not a whole lot in the literature about that, apparently.

It was beginning to grow light out as I finally flung aside a particularly unhelpful article in Russian in disgust. I looked out the window. A solitary figure was walking towards the hospital in the hazy light of dawn. Cullen! He was up early; it wasn't even five o'clock yet. As he walked across the deserted parking lot, an early ray of soft sunlight illuminated his face for a second. He pulled his hat firmly down so I could no longer see his face, but the brief glimpse had been enough.

_His skin glittered! _What the-? I sank down in my chair, utterly baffled. Yet another bizarre symptom! Glittering skin! The obvious answer would be that he is using some kind of skin lotion with glitter in it, but no lotion could sparkle like _that... _Like thousands of tiny diamonds... Some kind of basiloma? Oh, absurd, his flawless face is perfectly free of tumors, and apparently he only glitters in the sun.

I gulped down a fistful of Vicoden. For the first time in my life, I was completely, utterly stumped.

I spent the day pondering, but I got nowhere. At the end of the day, I realized that there was only one thing to do. Time to turn to a higher power. Even the great Sherlock Holmes had to throw in the towel every once in a while and go and seek the advice of his brother Mycroft. I decided to seek the advice of my own Mycroft, Miles the barman. He may not know anything about medicine (although he has been known to outshine Chase on occasion), but he pours very, very stiff drinks and is one hell of a good listener.


	5. Chapter 5

I opened my eyes, very slowly. The room was unnaturally bright, and I closed my eyes again rapidly. I decided to keep my eyes shut for a while until I figured out where the fuck I was and how I got there. Let's see... I went to a bar last night, and I had a few drinks. And then a few more, and some more after that. Good old Miles. And then, because I'm not an idiot, I took some more Vicodin to ease the inevitable hangover, and some more for good luck. And then... Well, that's where things get a little hazy.

I'm pretty sure I fell off the barstool at some point, but someone was there to catch me. I'm almost positive it was Cullen. Now, what was _he_ doing there? He doesn't seem to be the drinking sort. Coming to think of it, I don't think he _eats_, either. At least, I've never seen him do so. Kind of odd, actually.

All right, so Cullen intercepted my impending head-on collision with a stone floor. And I do remember him kind of inhaling me in that strange way and swearing at me. "Are you trying to kill yourself?" Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what he said. And then something about a lethal mix of alcohol and Vicodin. And then he actually _yelled_ at Miles the barman for letting me drink too much when he must have known I was taking medications, and Miles looked almost as pale as Cullen.

And then...

And then, this is where my blurry memories get totally weird. I seem to remember Cullen sort of swooping me up and carrying me out into the night air, and then a sensation of moving insanely fast. And then all of a sudden I was back in my apartment. I was lying in bed, and Cullen's golden eyes were clouded with worry. He was stroking my hair, and his pale hand was trembling. Then he whispered that I was going to _die. _And I remember him saying something about me being a fucking idiot. "You are so amazingly brilliant," he said, "and you have the ability to save so many lives, and yet you throw it all away like this... For nothing." Yep, I'm pretty sure that's what he said. I told him to stop being a moron, and that I would be fine, but I was actually not feeling all that great at that point. In fact, I don't remember ever feeling quite this bad before, including that time at Thanksgiving when Cuddy tricked me into eating tofu turkey. Perhaps I really was dying... But I sure as hell wasn't going to die with an unsolved mystery on my hands.

I grabbed Cullen and told him that the least he could do for a dying man was to tell me what _his _condition was, the mysterious cause of all his bizarre symptoms. And he smiled the most beautiful smile imaginable, and then _he told me_. Now, what was it he said? I remember that it made perfect sense at the time. It was something that explained everything, including the hardness of his arm, his obsession with my blood, and his acute sense of smell... but what was it? Damn, if only I could remember! It was something really unusual, but very obvious at the same time... Oh, well, it will come back to me.

And then I felt something exquisitely cool against my face, and it was _him. _He was kissing my face gently, with icy lips. A little strange, but he _did _think I was dying, after all. People do tend to get emotional over impending death. And then I remember... No, that part _must_ have been a dream. I firmly kicked the hazy memory of my own fevered kisses against his deliciously cool lips to the back of my brain, with the other drunken crap I keep back there. That did _not_ happen!

But I do remember Cullen whispering that he couldn't bear to lose me. "I have always been so rational and in control of myself," he said softly, "until I met you... Perhaps that was what it was like for Edward when he met Bella, and for Esme the first time she saw Charlie. This sudden madness, a world turned upside down... No, I will not let you die."

And then he did the strangest thing. He bent over me, and I felt his cold lips against my neck, and then... He _bit_ my neck. Kind of kinky, but since I was officially shit-faced drunk, I didn't really mind all that much. Part of my brain registered that the bite was rather deep, and that it would probably have hurt a hell of a lot if there hadn't been so much of that sweet Vicodin swimming through my body.

And then Cullen pulled away and stood there watching me anxiously for a while. Then, apparently satisfied that I wasn't going to die right away or jump up and bite him back, he patted my head gently. "Now get some sleep," he whispered. "When you wake up, things will be _different..."_

I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep, my dreams punctuated every now and then by a throbbing sensation from my neck.

Well, as it turned out, Cullen had been completely wrong. I didn't die. As if thirty-eight Vicodin could really have harmed anyone... Wait, I can't believe I suddenly remembered, with perfect clarity, precisely how many of those babies I had taken the day before! Hah! And Cuddy thought I was going cause permanent damage to my brain by taking too much Vicodin...

My brain seemed to be working fine. In fact, it was working better than ever. Everything seemed so ridiculously easy all of a sudden. Last week, I was puzzled by a patient with an odd skin rash. But now the answer was glaringly obvious: He had this cell phone practically glued to his ear during most of his appointment; he was allergic to the nickel in the cell phone, of course. Duh. How could I have missed that before? And the guy with the lizard-like skin the day before that had river blindness, caused by the bite of the blackfly. His vision is not affected yet, but he will go blind soon unless we give him a dose of ivermectin. Wow. That was easy.

I felt great. No hangover at all, which was quite remarkable. In fact, my whole body felt a lot better than it used to. It took me a while to pinpoint exactly what was different, but then it suddenly hit me: No pain! Well, apart from a light throbbing at my neck, a reminder of Cullen's playful bite the night before. I shook my head. I really had to point out to him that he was wasting his time with this hopeless crush on me. I had to get around to telling him that I'm not gay. At some point.

No pain! I jumped up and tried my leg just to make sure. Damn! Not only was there no pain - my leg also seemed _strong_, as if it had re-grown its atrophied muscles overnight. I guess a good night's sleep really can work wonders. I had not felt this _excellent_ in a very long time, if ever. I felt strength surge through my body, and my mind was ready to solve the most intricate medical mysteries in the twinkle of an eye. It felt as if I remembered every book and every article I've ever read, effortlessly, as if my brain had suddenly had an extra memory chip installed. Cool! For once, I couldn't wait to go to work.

But first, I really had to do something about... breakfast? No, that wasn't it. The nagging sensation I felt wasn't hunger, but something similar. Oh, yes, that was it: Thirst. I was really, really _thirsty.._.


End file.
